THE LAW’S DELAY
I
Judge Webster Thayer was considering the various motions for a new
trial, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti was manufacturing automobile license
plates in Charlestown State Prison; in his free time toiling at the
task of becoming a master of English prose. He wrote an elaborate
pamphlet on the Plymouth case, the importance of which, as a
preliminary step to the frame-up, he alone had realized. Then his
“Story of a Proletarian Life,” an autobiographical sketch, written in
Italian, and later translated into English with the help of friends. To
Cornelia he wrote, “I have received many praises for it. I must look
out to not be spoiled.”
There is a story of old-time New England, how the rebel Thoreau refused
to pay taxes to a government which captured fugitive slaves. He was put
into jail, and his friend Emerson came to see him, somewhat shocked.
“Henry, why are you here?” The answer was, “Waldo, why are you _not_
here?” This anecdote was recalled by an author who came to visit
Vanzetti in his cell at this time, and wrote about the case: “Now, as
formerly, Massachusetts has its finest soul in jail.” To this Vanzetti
replied:
“I understand and appreciate the reasons by which you were adviced to
exalt me far above my little merit. If there is a little of goodness in
me--I am glad of it--but really I do not deserve your praises (as they
are). I think there are some prisoners within these very four walls
which exile me from society, which are much better than I.... Humble I
wrote for the humble who must conquire the world to peace and freedom;
and I try to make plaine humble but ignored truths.”
He studied incessantly, and criticized what he read. “Last evening I
read a chapter of the ‘psicology’ (by William James). I perceive at
once to deal with a really great one. He speak with simplicity as
Reclu and others did. I will learn a good deal from this lecture. I
feel the fever of knowledge in me.”
He studied the problems of his own revolutionary movement, and
contributed to the anarchist press. “Actually I am overloaded of
works. To-day, at noon, instead of eat my dinner I have finished
the translation--from English into Italian of a quite long article.
Beside that I intend to write the last letter upon ‘Syndicates and
Syndicalism.’ I have wrote a historical, theoretic treaty on the
subject. I wrote it in epistolary form. They were published--many
congratulations came to me--at last the syndacalist replied to me with
an article that is a misery.”
He grew still more ambitious; he would write a novel! It was to be a
story of an immigrant laborer: as he phrased it, “a story that really
happened and has me as a spectator.” “Events and Victims” was the title
he chose, and he labored at it incessantly. He was not satisfied with
translations made by friends, and rewrote a great part of it in his own
English, patiently groping his way through the labyrinth of strange
idioms. When the long labor was finished, he wrote:
“I realize, by proof, how hard the literary test is. I have no
illusions. I wrote more for exercise than for anything else, and
I perceived to have gained something through it by improving my
capacity. The fact told had happened. As for the ideas, they are
sincere. But the write was spoiled when it happened that an egg,
believed cooked, smashed in my pocket outsetting thus my whole
nervous system.”
II
Poor old Bart! Lovable, queer, slyly humorous fanatic, keeping his
sense of whimsey, the same in a prison cell as Cornelia had known it
in the Brini household, and during long walks on the beach and in the
woods of Plymouth! He appreciated the troubles of his friends, who were
not great writers themselves, trying to help one who was excessively
ambitious. To Mrs. Evans he wrote:
“A few years ago, a good divvol of comrade, felt to have something
to say and wrote it down in an article that he sent to the weekly
for publication. In the enclosed letter he said to the edictor:
‘I have put down the words: please put down for me the commas and
the periods.’ To make that written presentable, the poor edictor
almost lost his reason and he wrote to the writer: ‘Next time, if
you wish your article to be pubbliced, just put down the commas and
the periods that I will put down the words for you.’”
And then the problem of keeping alive, while spending fifteen and
one-half hours per day in a prison cell! Bart’s friends gave him
advice, and he himself took much thought. He read the edicts of an
American specialist in omniscience, and commented:
“Mr. A. Brisbane always trouble me. Several month ago I read in a
book of physical culture, that to sit down is an unhealthy habit and
that the more one stand the better he feel. I like to feel well and
consequently I took the advice. But to-day Mr. A. Brisbane tell me that
the more we lay down the better it is. So I do not know now what I have
to do for my good health. Till now I used to read on my feet, more
often leaning like an elephant against the wall; from now I will maibe
sit down. Of course, the best way to prevent diseases and troubles to
a man is kill him while he feel well. Accept, please, my regards and
thanks.”
And always with his passionate love of the outdoors, and everything
to be found there. In the summer-time Cornelia went to visit friends
in the country, near the paper-box factory where Betty and Joe were
working. Because the strain of her long labors was telling upon her,
she took to outdoor work, and wrote much about her adventures. Bart
replied:
“I am still smiling--to not say laughing. Yes, I would be very amused
to see you work in your garden, for I alway laugh in observing the
women at a manual work. When I wish to smile--I have only to think at a
woman choping wood. I have take the ax out from the hands of some dozen
of them, and cut the wood.
“But here we are! You know how to make an asparogus bed! I do not know
to do it, and I have thought many time of it, for I like asparogus, and
I intend if the possibility should come to cultivate them. Now I know
by whom to be taught; and would it be possible, you would know what a
worker I am, and what a garden I will plant and work out under your
advice joined to some of my critersims. You would also know what a
lighted heart the rough Bartolomeo has. In spite of all, I often feel
yet as a child. I like to sing, to play and to foolish. But indeed, the
water is rough now. Maibe, thanks to all the good ones among whom you
are prominent, we will reach the shore someday.”
III
More discoveries of evidence, and more appeals to Judge Thayer. The
defense got an expert on arms, and he studied the so-called “mortal
bullet” under a high-powered microscope, and submitted a series of
charts with very expensive photographs, proving that this bullet could
not possibly have come through the Sacco pistol. To that the answer
of the Commonwealth was easy; they too had money, and could employ
experts. There were more long affidavits, full of technical terms and
mathematical formulas. From first to last there were only two things a
layman could be sure of; that every statement by every expert would be
flatly contradicted by another statement of another expert; and that
“Web” Thayer would believe the experts of his own side, and overlook
those of the defense.
These charts and affidavits constituted what was known as the “Hamilton
motion.” Then came the “Proctor motion”: an amazing story, exploding
like a bombshell among the friends of the cause. A new lawyer had
become active in the defense, William G. Thompson, and it happened
that he had had some dealings with Captain Proctor of the state
police. He went to Proctor and pleaded with him, and worked upon his
conscience, with the result that the old man blurted out the whole
story of his part in the “frame-up.” Thompson begged him to come and
tell it to Judge Thayer, and Proctor said he would--provided the judge
invited him. The lawyer went to Thayer in a fine fervor, thinking that
the judge would be concerned about the truth, and be glad to see it
prevail. But to his dismay he discovered that Thayer did not want to
talk with Proctor. “We will try this proposition on affidavits,” he
insisted.
So Proctor told his story, how the district attorney and his assistant
had framed a question to Proctor in such a way that the jury would
think he meant one thing, when in reality he meant another. And
then came the answering affidavits of Katzmann and Williams, another
illustration of the subtle art of betrayal--these answers were framed
in such a way as to seem to deny the Proctor charge, but in reality to
leave the central point untouched, and by implication to admit it!
The too-ardent young radicals imagined that this story would “blow
things wide open.” But they found that what seemed a bombshell to
them was a small firecracker to the rest of Massachusetts. This was
the Harding-Coolidge era; “Nan Britton’s boy” was president of the
United States, and the “Ohio gang” were the rulers of the nation. The
oil men had finished looting the oil reserves of the navy, and the
Veterans’ Bureau, supposed to take care of the victims of the great
war, had stolen some hundreds of millions; all along the line, the
password of government was “loot,” and the power of the secret service
and the attorney-general’s office was used to threaten and intimidate
those who disturbed the looters. In such a world it was hard indeed
to get publicity for injustice done to a pair of wops; and after you
had got it, the response of the public was that of the flag-saluting
jury-foreman: “Damn them, they ought to hang anyhow!”
Boston was different. Boston had blue-bloods, Boston was pious, proper,
and proud. But the payrolls for city work were padded with the names of
many imaginary laborers; twenty policemen were accused of breaking into
stores, holding wine parties in warehouses, and robbing prisoners. The
state police were confiscating liquor, and selling it again, or giving
it to their politician friends, who found it agreeable. The formula,
“It just came off the boat,” was changed to read, “It just came from
the State House.” By stages of graft you could mount, higher and
higher, until you found yourself dealing in millions, and associating
with the great bankers, who had loaned money to state legislators
without security; these legislators had bought Elevated Railway
stock, and had then voted a bill guaranteeing dividends, thus causing
twenty-five million dollars worth of stock to jump from twenty-five
to ninety. Rupert Alvin and his Pilgrim National crowd had not even
had the inconvenience of being indicted for that crime; one rebel
legislator, Thomas A. Niland, one opponent of graft among politicians,
had hired a sandwich-man and set him to picket the Court House with
a sign, reading: “Mr. District Attorney, indict the bribe givers and
bribe takers of the Boston Elevated.”
IV
The Jerry Walker case came to trial. More than five years after his
properties had been taken from him, the manufacturer of felt got a
chance to tell his troubles to a jury, and the public to see what
happened to big bandits in the august Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The case was tried in Dedham Court House with the round white dome and
portholes like an ocean liner; and it was destined to be appealed to
the Supreme Judicial Court, and finally decided within four weeks of
the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
The Jerry Walker trial lasted from the beginning of November, 1923,
to the end of November, 1924; the longest law-battle ever known
in the history of the Commonwealth. During that period of time
Cornelia Thornwell heard about little else when she was in touch
with her family. Two of her sons-in-law, two nephews-in-law, and two
cousins-in-law were involved, and the families ate, slept, walked, rode
and prayed with the case for the whole thirteen months. It was not
merely that fifteen millions of dollars were at stake, but the family
honor, and the safety of the country’s banking system; for if Jerry
Walker won his case, all the business men who had lost their properties
to bankers would set up similar claims. What would be the fun in
banking, if you were confined to the interest on your funds, and could
not use your control of credit to get possession of industry?
Cornelia was making it a rule to visit Sacco once or twice a month in
Dedham jail, and she would stop at the court-house and watch the great
duel of law. No guards with rifles on the steps, no gruff policemen
to search your hand-bag, no steel cage for the defendants! No; for
these were not the little bandits who break the law, these were the
big bandits who make the law. Everything quiet and dignified, in the
Harvard manner. With the exception of poor Jerry Walker himself,
everybody was Harvard--the real reason poor Jerry had lost out.
Polished gentlemen, with soft voices and slow drawls, dressed with
elegance, and always immaculate, regardless of weather and possible
weaknesses of the flesh, arguing fine points of law, and presenting
mountains of documents and miles of figures to a bewildered jury.
You would not have guessed that there was anything very special or
thrilling in process--unless you knew the sacred names, and realized
that here were the bluest of blue-bloods, the center of the center
and hub of the hub. These men who sat on hard benches listening, who
took the witness-stand to testify for days and sometimes weeks, were
the inner ring of those who held the financial and industrial power
of New England for their own. There were times when, if you had sat
with an adding machine, and tabulated the wealth owned by men in the
court-room, it would have amounted to several hundred million dollars;
if you had counted the wealth of other persons which they controlled,
and used to sway markets and support credit for their own advantage, it
would have totaled billions.
The trial would occupy a hundred and eighty-seven days of actual
hearings; more than two thousand exceptions would be taken to the
judge’s rulings, to be submitted to the higher court; the testimony
would be close to six million words, and the cost of the procedure to
the County of Norfolk would be more than two hundred thousand dollars.
Out of its great generosity of heart, the legislature went so far as
to pass a special measure, providing for the payment of nine dollars a
day to the jurymen in this case--and the bill was made retroactive! It
was in the public interest that these wholesale bandits should fight
out their fights in a court-room, instead of hiring private armies and
settling it on the streets. When the issue had been decided, these two
facts would stand out: first, that Harvard blue-bloods had the money;
and second, that their fellow-members of the Union Club had permitted
them to keep it.
V
To Cornelia Thornwell the really significant thing was this: that so
many concerned with the defense of the case were lying. The great
bankers were hiding what they had done to Jerry Walker, and their great
lawyers were sitting down with them, day after day and night after
night, framing what they were going to say. For five years Cornelia
had known that they would do this; it was so well understood in the
family that nobody was equal to the task of attempting to fool her.
There were fifteen millions of dollars at stake; and the driving power
of this sum was so colossal that it swept every barrier before it, and
truth, honor, dignity, justice, law, country, God and religion went out
like the contents of a chicken-ranch when a dam bursts at the head of a
valley.
Privately these bankers were quarreling bitterly among themselves as
Cornelia knew; the wives were cutting one another at bridge-parties,
and families were riven pro tem. But on the witness-stand every man
stood by the ship, and obeyed the orders of the captain, Rupert
Alvin. Cornelia got a new understanding of her oldest son-in-law. He
had always seemed to her a semi-comic figure, with his face and neck
of pink and purple bulges; humorless, naïve in spite of his heavy
pomposity, and pathetic while being hen-pecked by a Thornwell lady
whose family was older and greater than his. But now Cornelia observed
him as a man among men, and realized what are the qualities of a
successful bandit-leader.
They might be summed up in a single word, dependability; the gang must
know that the leader will always be there, and will never change;
that he will be the incarnation of solid, heavy, earnest greed, an
irresistible and incessant push for large sums of other people’s money.
Also, the gang must know that the leader will give them individually
a greater share than any other leader of equal greed-power. A quality
of Rupert’s that came out in the trial--he was a veritable mountain of
righteous respectability. He had only wanted a small share of the loot
for himself, and it had been necessary for his associates to insist
that he should have a large share. Said Quincy Thornwell, gossiping
with his Aunt Cornelia during the course of the revelations, “You
always have to insist that Rupert take a large share. And you always do
it. If you don’t, you are not in on the next big deal.”
Now here he was on the witness-stand, telling the story of his
relationships with Jerry Walker; the president of the Pilgrim National
Bank, who had promised poor Jerry a three-million-dollar loan at
twenty-seven per cent interest, and had “strung him along” for months,
having the plans all made, the syndicate of bankers formed, and Henry
Cabot Winters supposed to be getting the agreements ready--when as
a matter of fact Rupert had ordered that no agreements be got ready,
having no purpose but to have poor Jerry in a “jam” when his “paper”
came to maturity.
For more than a week Rupert was cross-questioned by Jerry’s little
bull-dog of a lawyer, and he was most gentlemanly and aristocratic
about his lying. He had reduced it to a formula, suitable to his
simple mind; he could remember ten thousand details which were to his
advantage, and he did remember them, promptly and exactly; but whenever
there was any detail which would have been to his disadvantage,
then he had forgotten about it. And that was all; it was charmingly
easy--he had only to say, “I do not remember.” The cross-examiner
might phrase the question in a score of different ways, he might make
any number of approaches to it, but he could never get anything from
the imperturbable Rupert except, “I do not remember.” It amused the
lawyers of Jerry Walker to go over the record, and count up the number
of matters about which Rupert’s memory had thus been adjusted to his
interests; he had managed to forget one hundred and seventy-three
different things.
Only once a bad slip! Early during the negotiations with Jerry Walker
he had put the blame on Henry Cabot Winters, and had said to Jerry,
“Henry has had his teeth in this thing once”--meaning in Jerry’s
felt-business. That was a terrible admission, and Rupert made it
elaborately, and in great detail, before his lawyers managed to
interrupt, and convey to him that it wouldn’t do. The great banker then
took the liberty of consulting his counsel; after the consultation,
he retracted his admission, and denied that he had ever said any
such thing to the plaintiff. A distressing moment; for there sat the
reporters of half a dozen newspapers, their pencils plying busily, and
the whole of State Street and the Union and Somerset Clubs waiting to
read the story that afternoon.
Then, the ordeal being over for Rupert, he went back to Boston, and
attended an assemblage of some men’s organization connected with his
Episcopal Church. Some evil person proposed that the organization
should take a stand upon the question of social justice, and Rupert
got up and moved that the resolution be tabled, and made a powerful
and impressive speech, in which he declared that the purpose of the
Episcopal Church was “spirituality,” and that it should not be lured
into controversies over mundane affairs. The Boston newspapers all
reported the discourse, and were strong for “spirituality.”
VI
Mr. Justice Thayer was rendering his decisions upon the various motions
for a new trial. The “Ripley motion,” the “Daley motion,” the “Pelzer
motion,” the “Andrews motion,” the “Goodridge motion”--he denied them
all; and he was judge, and the sole judge. He decided that his own
conduct had been proper, he decided that the new evidence was not such
as to warrant a new trial.
The one thing his victims got out of these decisions was a holiday
every time. The law required that the defendants should be present at
all stages of the proceedings; and so a miniature army would be called
out to move Nicola Sacco from Dedham Jail to Dedham Court-house, and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti would leave his cell for a whole day, and become
the delighted center of an automobile parade. He wrote Cornelia about
it, beginning with his breakfast, “a cup of coffee, three slices of
bread, two frankforts and mashed potatoes, all as cold as ice cream
could be.” Later when it was proposed to publish this narrative, Bart
was distressed, and insisted upon its being made plain that he had made
this remark playfully, because of course the prison authorities could
not prepare hot food out of hours.
“After such a breakfast, an official took me in the ‘Guard Room.’
The little chauffeur, an old officer, and the bravest one were
waiting for me. I was chained with the last one, and all four left
the room and went down to the street where the automobile was
ready. Six or seven officers stood at the door, with their right
hand near the back pocket, ready to protect me from any attack.
One must be most ungrateful man of the world for not feeling quite
reconoscent.”
And then his love of nature, the joy of escaping from darkness into
sunshine and open air:
“So we enter now into a Park the name of which I already forget,
but the beauty of it, I will never forget anymore. If I were poet
and know the meter, I would write a song of it in third rhyme.
(Italian, terza rima). I am not a poet, but neither so profane to
disturbing such splendor with my poor ink. The concerned officer
point to me a big brick building, saying ‘It is the Fine Arts
Museum.’ He point many other buildings saying that they are almost
all a private schools. I was, then regretting to have only a pair
of eyes, able to look in one direction alone. I observe everything,
the trees, the bushes, the grass, the rocks, and the brook along
the way on which I was raptured. The drops of dew look like pearls;
the sky reflects himself in the waters of the brook, and let one
think that it is bottomless.”
VII
Nicola Sacco had been for more than three years a victim of the law’s
delay. He had spent all but an hour or two each day in a cell with
nothing to do, and the strain of it was affecting his mind. He could
not understand why persons who espoused his cause should look for
justice to one old man who hated him and was determined to have his
life. He could not understand why this one old man should need years to
decide matters about which his mind was made up in advance. He could
not understand why the money of the anarchist movement should be wasted
upon futilities. Brooding thus, he became morose, like a dog chained
up; he suspected every one who came near him, he would not sign any
more legal papers; presently he would not write letters, nor leave his
cell, nor speak to any one.
Cornelia would travel to Dedham to test her social prestige upon
the “chief officer,” as he was called, to obtain some amelioration
of the harsh prison régime. The chief officer was large, stout,
superannuated, and Cornelia, seeking to win his favor, had to listen to
long discourses concerning his diet; he was centered upon “reducing,”
and talked about it in more intimate detail than even Clara Thornwell
Scatterbridge. He would keep an old lady standing while he enumerated
the pounds he had managed to take off by this method and that; and the
next time she came, he would forget what he had told her, and tell it
again. “Would you believe that I used to weigh two hundred and sixty?”
This man who could not keep from eating too much would take a tin plate
of cold food, with two slices of bread on top--a narrow plate, made
especially to go between the bars of a cell--and if the prisoner in
the cage complained of monotony and failed to eat the food, the chief
officer would discourse for another hour to his visitors: these men
were worth nothing, the more you did for them the less grateful they
were. When Cornelia went away, he would grumble to the other officers
about rich women who came “butting in on prisons,” spoiling the
inmates, insisting on new things that nobody had ever heard of before.
“Gosh, if that old hen would mind her own business!”
Some friends of this old gentleman insisted to Cornelia that he was
well-meaning, and trying to do his duty as he saw it. But to her he
seemed the embodiment of that mountainous, colossal, insensitive
stupidity which was in authority throughout the world--which indeed
seemed to be the very nature of authority. Several years ago there had
been a legislative investigation of county institutions, and a severe
arraignment of conditions; but the county graft-rings had been able to
block every move, and nothing had been done.
Sacco was more of a problem than the average prisoner. He could not
work in the plant which made shoes for the prisoners, because he was
such a swift worker, he cleaned up everything in sight; moreover,
another prisoner had attacked him, hating him as a “Red” and an
atheist. He could not work in the carpenter shop, because he was a
“murderer,” not to be trusted with tools. Kitchen work was barred for
the same reason. In short, there was nothing for him but twenty-two
hours a day in a cell; so he became frantic, and at half-past one
o’clock in the morning leaped from his cot and began to pound his head
against a chair, in an effort to dash out his brains. He succeeded in
cutting four gashes in his scalp, which a surgeon had to sew up. Then
Nick declared what he called a “hungry strike,” and for thirty-three
days he did not touch food.
The chief officer was not allowed to do anything about it--so he
understood the law; if a wop didn’t want to eat, nobody had a right to
make him eat. It was good anarchist doctrine, and Cornelia discovered
that many members of the defense committee agreed with it. The Italians
were convinced that there was no hope of saving Nick from the chair,
and according to their philosophy, a man had a right to end his life
if he wanted to. If he did so, the agony would be over, and the cause
would have a good martyr.
There was a hearing due on one of the motions for a new trial; one of
those interminable farces that occurred every month or two, whenever a
motion was made, a new affidavit submitted, an argument heard. Every
such time the miniature army would go into action, and the two wops
would be brought in and locked in the cage; Judge Thayer would enter
with a rustle of black silk robes, and the bailiff would pound with
his wand and repeat his formula, beginning, “Hear ye! Hear ye!” The
judge would sit down, and have another chance to pour out his withering
contempt upon the prisoners and their counsel.
But during the “hungry strike,” the sheriff refused to take the
responsibility of moving Sacco from the jail to the court-house. What
was to be done? Fred Moore had an office assigned to him, across the
hall from the court-room; and there was a terrible scene--the lawyer
maintaining his intention of going before the judge with a motion to
determine Sacco’s sanity, and the anarchists arguing, denouncing,
threatening, clamoring for the prisoner’s right to decide his own
fate, without the intervention of aliens, enemies, traitors and spies.
The uproar became so great that the judge sent the bailiff to command
order. In the end Moore went ahead and made the motion, with Cornelia
standing behind him. For this neither of them was ever forgiven.
VIII
Examinations were made, and the prisoner adjudged insane, and committed
to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital--where they made short work of his
anarchistic right to commit suicide. They strapped him into a chair and
put a rubber tube up into his nose and down into his gullet, and poured
in some milk. It is a hideously painful experience, and rather than
undergo it again, Nick agreed to eat. After that he was committed to
the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminal Insane, where they were kind
to him; the doctors would listen while he set forth his principles,
and would agree that they were beautiful principles--as indeed they
were. Very soon Nick was strong again, and a “good fellow,” eager and
sociable. Outdoor work was given to him, and he did it gladly.
So now he was “cured,” and must go back to Dedham. But the physicians
refused to certify him unless he was to have occupation; so the chief
officer was induced to modify his time-honored régime. Nick was to do
basket-weaving, and three times a week a volunteer teacher was to come
and give him lessons. This was Mrs. Bang, a Danish lady, who taught
manual training to blue-blood children in private schools; she must
guard the dark secret, that she came three afternoons a week to visit
an anarchist atheist draft-dodger convicted of banditry and murder.
Mrs. Bang was one more problem in Sacco’s life. Why should a person
who was able to wear good clothes and drive about in an automobile,
take six long journeys a week, through a New England winter, to teach
anything to a prisoner without pay? It did not fit into the class-war
theory. But Mrs. Bang won his confidence--it was easier, because she
was a foreigner. Strange to say, she found that Nick loved America, and
wanted to live here. His wife talked about going back to Italy, but he
insisted that the children had a better chance in the new world. Page
Mr. Katzmann!
Nick made bags from twine, decorated with beads; he made an elaborate
tray of reeds, with flowers and butterflies. He developed a wish to
learn English, the better to take his lessons. So came letters, to Mrs.
Evans, to Mrs. Henderson, to Cornelia: letters in home-made spelling,
but otherwise clear and direct. For example, when Cornelia made a
present of clothing to his family:
“I remember a few years ago on our love day when I bought the first
lovely blue suit for my dear Rosina and that dear remembrance
still remains in my heart. That was the first day nineteen twelve
in Milford, Mass., the celebration day of the five martyrs of
Chicago, that in the mind of the humanity oppressed never will be
forget. So in morning May first nineteen twelve I dress up with my
new blue suit and I went over to see my dear Rosina and I asked
her father if he won’t let Rosina come with me in the city town to
buy something and he said yes. So in afternoon about one o’clock
we both us went in city town, and we went in a big store and we
bought a brown hat, a white underdress, a blue suit, one pair
brown stock, one pair brown shoes, and after she was all dress up,
I wish you could see Rosina, how nice she looked, while now the
sufferings of to-day had make her look like an old woman. But I
never was ambitious to buy her diamonds and so-so, but I always
bought everything that could be natural and usefull.
“Just now I am sitting alone always, but with me, in my soul, in my
heart, in my mind, are all immense legion of the noble and generous
friends and comrades. Here I say I’m sitting writing to you these
few lines; the sunlight it shines on my face and for a brief time
it is a relief to my soul, and it brightens my mind by looking at
the clear blue sky and the beautiful mother of nature.... I will
live for humanity and for the solidarity and for the fraternity and
for gratitude to all the friends and comrades who have worked for
Sacco and Vanzetti; and I will live for freedom and for justice
that is the justice of all of us.”
IX
From scenes in Dedham jail Cornelia would walk a few blocks to Dedham
court-house, and watch the male members of her family engaged in
wholesale respectable perjury. She saw Henry Cabot Winters, who had
spent his life harrowing other persons, and now for the first time was
toad instead of harrow. Every trace of the familiar ease and charm was
gone from Henry’s manner; he was exactly like any other witness telling
lies and getting caught; the perspiration appeared upon his forehead,
and had to be mopped away repeatedly. Under solemn oath he had declared
that on a certain date he had had no interest whatever in the concerns
of Jerry Walker; and then Jerry’s lawyer produced the charge-accounts
of Henry’s office, in which the great man and his subordinates kept a
record of the expenditure of their valuable time. On those pages Henry
was set down as having given a thousand dollars’ worth to the Jerry
Walker matter, and then five thousand more--it meant several days! He
had even gone so far as to open a separate account for time given to
the felt-business; he was starting to take it over, at a time when
the owner was resting serene in the promises of Rupert and the other
bankers, that he was to have three million dollars’ credit to handle
his war-contracts!
Jerry Walker’s lawyers produced the accounts of all his concerns,
and showed how prosperous they had been. They showed the complicated
series of moves whereby Henry Cabot Winters had made it impossible
for Jerry to get a dollar out of any of them. The lawyer had started
fake bankruptcy proceedings against one enterprise; he had secretly
purchased some of Jerry’s notes, and caused other persons to start
lawsuits, to place attachments and obtain injunctions. And now here
he was on the witness-stand, squirming and wincing, obliged either to
admit that he had done these things, or else to be proved a perjurer.
On another day Cornelia heard the cross-examination of a great banker
from New York, president of one of the dozen institutions which control
the financial life of America. This gentleman had held several hundred
thousand dollars’ worth of Jerry’s notes, and had turned them over to
Rupert and Henry, to be used in clubbing Jerry to his knees. He had sat
down with the lawyers and learned an elaborate mass of perjury, and
felt very uncomfortable while telling it to Jerry’s lawyer, because
that lawyer happened to know him well. The lawyer asked a simple
question, about which he knew the banker was going to lie; and he fixed
his stern gaze upon his victim, a sort of hypnotic stare. Something
happened to the witness, he “lost his head,” as the saying is; all that
elaborate structure of falsehood which he had learned went suddenly out
of his mind, he couldn’t remember the beginning or the end of it.
A dead silence in the court-room, a long, long silence, apparently
endless. The witness sat with the lawyer staring into his eyes, like
a rabbit fascinated by a snake. At last the judge had to intervene:
“Are you conscious at all of any mental agitation just now, so that you
would like to leave the stand for a time and compose your mind? I think
we have been waiting nearly fifteen minutes for your answer to that
question. Are you sensible of a desire to leave the stand for a while?
If you are you may do so.”
But the great banker could not think what to say, even to that. The
Court had to repeat and urge. “You might answer that question. I
ask you if you desire to leave the stand for a time and collect your
thoughts on this subject?”
Finally the witness found his voice: “I would like to, to be perfectly
sure on this.”
Upon which the proceedings of the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, now sitting within and for the County of Norfolk, came
to a halt. The great Wall Street banker left the chair, and sat apart
in the court-room, while everybody else, including the judge and the
jury, did nothing but wait. An amazing, an incredible scene. Whispers
of the spectators now and then, but mostly dead silence, so as not to
interrupt the mental labors of the man of millions, supposed to be
trying to recall whether he had had a certain conference with a certain
man on a certain day--but in reality trying to bring back to mind the
elaborate structure of falsehood which his lawyers had worked out for
him.
For almost an hour that extraordinary pause continued; and all the
while there were ghosts in the court-room, calling to Cornelia
Thornwell. The ghosts of Nicola Sacco, being harrowed by District
Attorney Katzmann! Nick being accused of the crime of having slandered
Harvard College! Cornelia imagined him asking for an hour’s time
to dig up from his subconscious mind the statistics, that Harvard
educated free something over one hundred students every year, while
the University of Wisconsin educated five thousand, eight hundred and
ninety-five! She imagined Nick asking for an hour’s time to recollect
whether he was “that man” who had dared to criticize America, after
running away to Mexico! She imagined him sitting for an hour trying to
recall what his lawyers had told him he had been doing on the night of
his arrest! Picturing such things, Cornelia had an impulse to laugh out
loud; which would have been a shocking breach of decorum--the Superior
Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, now sitting within and
for the County of Norfolk, would never have recovered from it. But
no, Cornelia had been for forty years the mistress of a blue-blood
household, and she sat, perfectly rigid, keeping her excitement inside.
X
Dark days for the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, that year of 1924, with first
Nick in the insane asylum, and then Bart. Funds had run out entirely;
Fred Moore was a lawyer without an office; there was no committee, no
program, no action--nothing but two wops in torment, and a promise of
some legal decisions in an indefinite future. Judge Thayer was having
an attack of pneumonia, and then of appendicitis; but refusing to
die and let some other judge deal with the case. He would keep the
half-crazed victims in their cells, until he could have the glory and
the thrill of summoning them to court again, and with his cold metallic
voice like a thin strip of steel cutting into their souls.
Betty and Joe had finished their year in the paper-box factory in
a blaze of excitement. They had organized the workers, and been
discharged for their activities; whereupon the workers had declared
a strike, and stayed out nearly a month, and got soundly walloped by
police and bosses. Betty had had her turn on the picket-line, and
as a result had changed her philosophy; she was all for solidarity,
and opposed to every label--socialist, communist, anarchist, or what
not--which split the workers and wasted their energies. She would
go to Charlestown to visit Bart, and they would get into an excited
controversy, and Bart would write treatises to controvert her heresy.
He would forget his own deadly peril, in his anxiety to save Betty from
a false theory.
That was characteristic of all the Boston anarchists--they were strong
on theory, and weak on actuality. It was that which made the defense so
difficult; when a new move was to be made, they had to be persuaded,
and it was a job that took until the small hours of the morning, and
then had to be done all over again. No anarchist committee meeting ever
ended, because somebody had a right to say something more; no decision
could be taken, and if it was, it wasn’t binding. If you didn’t like
it, you said nothing, but went off and worked against it. If anybody
said that wasn’t fair, you shrugged your shoulders and said: “Shoo--er,
why not? Ain’t I got right for say what I please? No, I no got to say
it in committee, I say it when I want say it. If you not like it, you
got right say so--any time, any place.”
In other words a committee of anarchists was a contradiction in terms;
it was not a committee, but a number of impermeable and unassimilable
units, and anybody who ever did anything was sure to be regarded as a
dictator or meddler. Fred Moore was sleeping on a canvas cot in the
committee-headquarters, and living on pancakes, because he had turned
in his last salary-check to pay the printer; yet, if you brought up a
new plan to raise funds, you would be sure to hear that it was contrary
to “filosofia anarchica.” If, nevertheless, you insisted upon action,
you would be told, “All right, do it, if you want, you got right.” But
if you insisted that the sanction of the committee was necessary before
the action could be effective, you would hear, “No, we don’t give no
sanction, if you want do it, you do it for self.”
Even at times when money was on hand, it was almost impossible to get
them to pay it out. Money was contrary to “filosofia anarchica,” it was
an instrument and a symbol of graft. What did people need so much for?
What right did they have to it? In one desperate pinch, Cornelia sent
an organizer to New York, to address meetings and appeal to the radical
labor unions, especially the Jewish clothing-workers. This man sent
back a couple of thousand dollars; but he had to come back to Boston in
order to get his weekly pay-check to keep him going.
Fred Moore’s idea was to spend money to get more; it was the American
way. When he learned that there was a convict in Atlanta penitentiary
who might tell something about the real bandits, he wanted to get on
the train and rush down there; he did not want to spend a night arguing
with the committee, and miss his train as a result. When he wanted to
send a man to Italy to hunt for Coacci or Boda, or to trail a suspected
bandit to Texas or the Argentine, Moore would have to threaten to drop
the case; it would be the only way to get a check signed.
Such were the sufferings of lawyers in contact with anarchists: and
equally real and anguished were the sufferings of anarchists in
contact with lawyers! To rebels and “libertarians” the lawyer was the
incarnation of repression and enslavement; he was a spider who spun
webs of tradition about the limbs of humanity. Everything he did was
waste, his very language was an insult, and the expense he incurred
meant a bleeding to death of the radical movement. Let the martyrs die,
and spend the money upon “literature,” said the fanatics. But the
lawyer would point out that the money would not come for “literature,”
it came to keep the martyrs alive, and he was the sole possessor of the
secret lore whereby that might be accomplished.
As individuals, you would find many of these Italian anarchists
simple and lovable, sometimes charming; in their naïveté a relief
from New England stiffness and solemnity. You must be patient with
their fanaticism, realizing that it was the excess of a virtue;
they represented the principle of variation, without which human
life would be that of the ants and bees. When you found them most
exasperating--when you felt like taking the whole of “filosofia
anarchica” and dumping it into the Back Bay--then you must remind
yourself that great scientists had held and taught this creed,
Kropotkin and the Reclus brothers; great poets, such as Shelley and
Emerson; moral teachers, such as Tolstoi and Thoreau, George Fox and
William Penn, Jesus and Buddha. Not all these had called themselves by
the name anarchist, but all had stood for the principle, the supremacy
of the individual conscience over social compulsion. If the movement
produced more dangerous lunatics than it did prophets and saints, that
was the price which humanity had to pay in the search for higher types
of being.
XI
Dark days for idealists and dreamers of “joostice”! Fascist reaction
enthroned in Italy, and reaching out to control America; organizing the
Italians into murder-bands, to break up Socialist meetings in American
cities, and obtain the deportation of Italian radicals, to be shot at
home. In such activities they would have the coöperation of American
police, and of Federal secret service; Mussolini was the new hero of
our bankers and college-students, generally voted the greatest man in
the world.
It was a presidential election year, and Senator LaFollette, who had
exposed the oil-thieves, was a Bolshevik and betrayer of his country,
while “Cautious Cal” was the strong silent statesman, who had made more
speeches than any other man ever in the White House. In their frenzy
of reaction the big business men even set out to smash the proposed
constitutional amendment prohibiting child-labor, and keep several
millions of little ones in mills and mines, instead of going to school.
There was a ferocious campaign in Massachusetts, an explosion of all
the forces of bigotry and avarice. The little group of workers for
the Sacco-Vanzetti defense lived in the midst of that uproar, like
travelers in an African jungle who hear the beating of tom-toms and see
the glare of fires upon which human flesh is being roasted.
Cal Coolidge’s political and financial boss was a great lord of
cotton-mills in New England, soon to be made a United States senator.
He it was who led this campaign, and rallied the business men and
bankers, the newspaper editors and college professors, the bootleggers,
the criminals, and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. This latter
organization, kept generously by the business interests, had invested
its funds in choice real estate, and become one of the wealthiest
corporations in the Commonwealth. Now was the time for it to pay its
debt, and suffer the little children to come unto the mill-masters.
The head of this religious machine was Cardinal O’Connell, jovially
referred to by the newspaper men as “Big Bill,” and by his enemies
as “the papal bull”; a huge hippopotamus of a man, weighing over
three hundred pounds, and like Clara Thornwell Scatterbridge and the
chief officer of Dedham Jail, devoting his attention to the problem
of “reducing.” It happened that Cornelia had spent her summers near
the prelate’s summer residence, and seen him daily, taking his
constitutional, a picturesque figure in a scarlet cloak, against
a background of azure river. To his intimates he was a genial and
convivial soul--not troubled by the eighteenth amendment, but having
access to the best stores of conviviality. He was an organist and a
judge of pictures, a generous buyer of old masters and rare books; a
Renaissance prince of the church, building a white stone palace out
on Commonwealth Avenue. The Jews had built themselves a Temple Israel
nearby, a plain concrete structure, and the Irish-Catholic conductors
of street-cars, answering the questions of tourists, would point their
thumb contemptuously and say, “That? Sure, that’s Cardinal O’Connell’s
garage.”
Cornelia went to see him, a little later on, escorted by her nephew
Quincy. She pleaded with the great man to say a word for mercy to
Sacco and Vanzetti; but he was cautious and preferred to talk about
Japanese art and Buddhist philosophy. Quincy sat, a much-amused
spectator; being a wit and diner-out, he knew the great man, and had
brought his Bolshevik aunt to tea by way of a prank. Going and coming,
Quincy told stories about the Cardinal, who had begun life as an Irish
“mick” in “the Patch,” as the slums of Lowell were known. He was much
too intelligent a man to believe the mythology he taught; but he held
that it was what the masses needed to keep them obedient. He owned many
blocks of stock in cotton-mills, and was a reactionist now, but in his
young days had been a modernist, and highly indignant because some of
his writings had been put on the Index.
There were many Catholics among the millionaire industrialists and
bankers of Massachusetts, and the Cardinal would invite them to dinner;
they would come with stars on their bosoms and garters on their
legs, and would be in heaven. The great prelate could ask them for a
million or two any day, and buy the best sites for orphan asylums and
seminaries and church colleges and what not. In this way he had spent
fifty million dollars in ten years. So now when these mill-owners and
bankers wanted the people of Massachusetts to vote their children into
wage-slavery, “Big Bill” was the boy to do their job.
Four Sundays during the month of October, 1924, he made every priest in
the diocese stand before the high altar at high mass, and read aloud a
diatribe, based upon the lies circulated by the manufacturers’ agents,
representing the Children’s Bureau at Washington as a device of Moscow
for the undermining of the American home. Mrs. Florence Kelley, leading
social worker, and champion of the child-labor amendment, had once been
the wife of a Russian. Thirty-two years previously, she had divorced
this man, and had received from the courts the right to resume her
father’s name of Kelley; she had been a “Kelley” for sixty out of her
sixty-eight years of life. But now the opponents of the child-labor
amendment placarded her from Maine to California as Mrs. Wischnewetzky,
Bolshevik agent! By methods such as this, they induced the people of
Massachusetts to vote down the amendment by two to one, and the little
children of the Commonwealth were saved for God and Senator Butler.
XII
In November, 1924, after a year, Judge Thayer handed down his
decision on the Proctor motion for a new trial. This motion was the
main reliance of the defense lawyers; they could not imagine how the
confession of one of the state’s leading witnesses that he had “framed”
his evidence in collusion with the prosecutors, could fail to be
ground for a new trial. But “Web” would show them! He would crowd all
his arts into one document--twisting and wriggling, evading issues;
misrepresenting everything the defense lawyers had claimed about the
Proctor confession.
The issue was very simple, but “Web” wound it up in thousands of words,
and to make plain all his tricks would require thousands more. He said
that the questions asked of Captain Proctor were clear, and must have
been perfectly understood by him; which would have been a good joke, if
it had been meant as such. Of course they were understood by Proctor,
and no one had ever suggested that they were not. What Proctor had
confessed was that the questions had been contrived for the purpose of
being obscure to the jury: which was certainly an entirely different
matter.
Next “Web” asked whether the questions were “unfair or improper.” Of
course they were not. What had been “unfair and improper” was that the
witness and the district attorney had framed the questions in such a
way that the jury would think they meant what they didn’t mean; also
that the judge had represented to the jury that they meant what they
didn’t mean.
The question which had been “framed” had to do with whether Proctor,
as an expert on fire-arms, believed that the “mortal bullet” had come
through Sacco’s pistol and none other. And it really made you wonder
if you were dealing with an insane man when the judge went on from
point to point, asking over and over again why Proctor hadn’t said
plainly what he meant; as if Proctor had tried to make matters plain,
and failed--when the whole point of the confession was that he had
deliberately made matters obscure!
But “cunning old Fury” was not insane; he knew what he was doing, and
went ahead, twisting every contention out of shape, misrepresenting
the plain meaning of the plainest English words. He charged the defense
lawyers with having claimed that Proctor “honestly believed that the
mortal bullet was not fired through the Sacco pistol.” But Proctor had
not said that, and the defense had not said that he had said it.
Funniest joke of all--“Web” said that the answers of the district
attorney and his assistant to the Proctor confession were “clear and
convincing.” To employ the slang of Pierre Leon, you could “bet your
shoes” they were! They were clear and convincing of the fact that
Katzmann and Williams knew that Proctor’s confession was true, and had
not dared to deny it while Proctor was alive. They had carefully evaded
the main point; and the judge now carefully followed suit; relying, of
course, upon the fact that nobody would have the text of the answers,
nor the patience to disentangle the sophistry in them.
Having performed this intellectual feat, “Web” was proud of it, and
went out, as usual, to boast. He thought he had earned a holiday,
so he went to Dartmouth, his college, to attend one of the football
games. On the field he saw Professor James P. Richardson, and came up
to him, demanding in a loud voice: “Did you see what I did to those
anarchistic bastards the other day? I guess that will hold them for a
while. Let them go to the supreme court now and see what they can get
out of them!” There was more to the discourse, and the professor stood,
upon pins and needles, as the saying is, because it seemed to him an
unimaginable impropriety, and he knew that others were listening. He
got away as quickly as he could.
It was “Web’s” way. He was engaged upon a crusade, to destroy the Reds
in Massachusetts; and he did not understand how others could fail to be
interested in his exploits. He would punish his friends, his club-mates
and associates with long tirades, until they would be bored and ask
him to quit. A group of lawyers who lunched in the club at Worcester,
would turn their shoulders to him and talk about other matters. The old
man would sit mumbling to himself: “They don’t understand! They don’t
realize! The Vandals are at our gates, and are going to destroy us!”
XIII
This failure of the “Proctor motion” was the finishing blow for
Vanzetti. Impossible to hope after that! Impossible to go on enduring
the indignities of prison. Bart decided that his friends and the whole
movement were being betrayed. Also he took up the notion that his
ill health was due to slow poisons given to him in his food. He too
declared a “hungry-strike,” and about Christmas-time of the year 1924
was certified to the Bridgewater asylum. The Sunday after he was taken
away, the prison chaplain preached a sermon to his flock, pointing out
the danger of departing from the holy faith. Look at poor Vanzetti, who
had lost his mind, a hopeless wreck! It was the same Father Murphy who
had said, “Tell me, Vanzetti, who drove the car at South Braintree?”
To the psychiatrists at Bridgewater this prisoner represented a
well-known type; a victim of what they called “delusions of grandeur,”
or the “messianic complex.” He had the notion that the future would
be interested in him and his sayings and doings; that books would be
written about his case, and translated into many languages, and read
by millions of people. He lived his life and endured his sufferings in
the presence of future generations, who would reverse Judge Thayer’s
verdict upon him, as they had reversed other verdicts upon agitators
and rebels--John Brown and Giordano Bruno and John Huss, Galileo and
Socrates and Jesus. Furthermore, he had the fixed idea that he could
learn to write English, and accumulated quantities of manuscript, which
he thought would convert others to his cause.
In order to pacify him, it was necessary to pretend to agree with
him, and then one could have quite interesting talks. He was a man of
surprising culture, considering that he had been a laborer all his
life; he was reflective, shrewd, even humorous at times. He did not
make friends easily, preferring to sit aloof; but when a physician said
that he believed in “joostice,” the prisoner would be eager to explain
his brand of it, and would sit for hours, telling Dr. Stearns with the
utmost seriousness how a society might be run without government or
forcible repression.
These specialists in human mentality were not asked their opinion as
to the probable guilt of this convicted bandit, but they could not
help having ideas on the subject. They reported Vanzetti as of the
intellectual, not the motor type; awkward, not active. They said that
if he committed an assault, it would be, not with intent to kill, but
to show feeling. They pictured a man with his excess of emotion and
imagination, attempting to commit a hold-up; it was their judgment that
his heart would beat violently, his knees would shake, he would hear
a noise behind him, and whirl about and shoot blindly, or throw away
the gun in a panic--a “brainstorm,” as it was known to the writers and
readers of crime-news. The psychiatrists furthermore reported that
the professional bandits and hold-up men in the prisons jeered at the
idea that Sacco and Vanzetti could have done that South Braintree job;
they were offended in their dignity by the suggestion that a couple of
bunglers and novices could have got away with anything so competent and
swift.
XIV
The jury brought in its verdict in the Jerry Walker case; a terrible
blow to the Thornwell men--saying, in effect, that they had perjured
themselves upon the witness-stand. The jury found that Jerry Walker was
entitled to damages equal to the market value of his properties at the
time they were taken from him, plus the interest; a trifle over ten and
one-half millions of dollars. It was the biggest verdict ever brought
in the Commonwealth, and men talked about it in the clubs for weeks.
The decision was announced a week before Christmas, and completely
spoiled that gracious season in the Thornwell, Winters, Alvin,
and Scatterbridge homes. Rupert took to his bed with a severe
“coryza”--since it would not do for a great banker to have a common
cold. He entertained his wife and visiting ladies of the family with
terrible pictures of the collapse of Boston banking, consequent upon
the custom of allowing decisions concerning millions of dollars to
rest in the hands of men who could not have financed a peanut-stand.
According to Rupert, all the bankers in Boston would immediately be
sued for all the money they had made in the last ten years--which was a
commentary on the city’s banking-system from a leading authority.
Rupert’s expensive lawyers would be put to work at once to appeal the
case; and even while he was scolding and pessimizing, and snuffling
and sneezing and snorting and blowing with the coryza, Rupert’s mental
dynamo was driving away at new plans. The details of the appeal would
be left to the lawyers, while Rupert would concentrate on the judges.
He had suggested the appointment of two or three members of the Supreme
Judicial Court, and hoped he could count upon them. He began figuring
over the others: their families and connections, social and financial.
Whose men were they, and what obligations were they under?
Presently Rupert would be sending for good gossips, such as Quincy
Thornwell, who could help him pick up information. If any of these
judges had close relatives who were lawyers, it might be a good
idea to retain these. If they had intimate friends who could talk
to them, methods must be worked out to approach these friends--in a
strictly high-minded and proper way, of course--pointing out to them
the dreadful state of uncertainty in which the financial affairs of
Massachusetts were left by this unprecedented jury decision. How could
big bandits stay in business, if, after they had held a pistol to the
victim’s head and got him to sign a document excusing them for the
robbery, the police should be allowed to step in and say that the
document didn’t count?
It would take more than two years for the Full Court of the Supreme
Judicial Court to weigh and decide this mighty issue; so Rupert had
plenty of time to continue his intrigue. He would not have to buy any
members of the higher court; he trusted that nobody had been appointed
who was not the sort of person to respect great bankers and appreciate
their difficulties as the invisible rulers of America. It was an
unwritten custom that as soon as a man was appointed to this court he
was also made a member of the very old and exclusive Union Club; so
Rupert and his associates would meet the justices at luncheon every day
when the court was in session; and while they would not be so crude as
to refer to the case, they could talk about business stability and the
sanctity of contracts; they could arrange for others to do the same,
the big and weighty men to whom the justices had had to come, to beg
for the favor of appointment. At the time when Rupert knew the Full
Court was giving its time to the case, he would bring it about that
great bankers from New York would happen to ride up in the elevator
with the justices and happen to remark in clear tones that all business
in New England was held up, waiting to find out if the courts were
going to permit credit to be undermined and contracts repudiated.
XV
Yet, with all this power in his hands, Rupert was nervous; he could
not help worrying, to the great damage of the calcified veins in his
ankles and legs. His brother-in-law tried in vain to keep him cheerful:
Henry Cabot Winters, who had worked out for himself a wonderful scheme,
whereby he was going to snap his fingers at all courts and their
decisions. Henry was going to make over his property to his sister, and
then go into bankruptcy!
Ordinarily this service is performed for business men by their wives;
but Henry was afraid of Alice. Not that she would keep his money--no
Thornwell would ever be a thief; but she might have a brainstorm, and
decide that it was for the good of his soul for the money to be turned
over to an occultist society. Just now the mad streak in the Thornwells
was manifesting itself in Alice’s determination to be a lady “chela.”
She was bringing bowls of rice and fresh straw for bedding to a real
“shri,” who was at one with Brahma, and must not be spoken to. Every
day Alice put on a snow-white robe and stood in front of a black screen
in a pitch-dark room, in order that her aura might be studied, and her
soul-troubles diagnosed thereby.
But Henry had a sister, Agatha Winters, who was pure “New England,”
unmarried and unchanging. He went to see her in the village where she
lived in the family homestead, devoting herself to church work. He
explained his troubles; wicked men had conspired to ruin him, and if
they succeeded, obviously he would no longer be able to contribute to
his sister’s support, and she would no longer be able to give her time
to the Lord. So Agatha knew that it was the Lord’s purpose for her to
aid Henry against his enemies. She had learned from the Old Testament
that the Lord aided His own against others, and that He was not too
scrupulous as to the means.
So Henry put five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of liberty bonds
into Agatha’s name, and had them sold and converted into a bank-draft
payable to her. She endorsed it, and Henry sold her some of his
property for it. He then bought more liberty bonds, and had them sold
in Agatha’s name, and put the money into another bank-draft, for which
Agatha bought another half-million dollars’ worth of his property.
This procedure was continued until Agatha was the registered legal
owner of every bond and share of stock and piece of real estate which
Henry owned, including everything which he had got from Jerry Walker;
including even the automobile he drove, the yacht on which he spent his
week-ends, the five-gaited snow-white Arabian stallion which he rode,
and the apartment-house in which he kept his mistress, a charming and
popular concert-singer.
So the great lawyer could go into court and swear that he did not own
a dollar in the world; and Agatha would be able to produce canceled
vouchers, showing the actual payment of cash to the full market
value of every piece of property she had acquired. Hidden away in a
safe-deposit box to which Henry alone had the key there was a will,
executed by Agatha in Henry’s favor; and a deed, selling back to Henry
for the sum of one dollar and other good and valuable considerations,
all the property which Henry had sold to Agatha. This latter document
was blank as to date; thus Henry had everything fixed so that, the day
the Supreme Judicial Court upheld the Jerry Walker verdict, he could
file a petition in bankruptcy, and wipe out his share of the claims
forever. After which, he would take back his property again, and laugh
in the face of his enemies!
XVI
The Thornwell generations came and went. Great-uncle Abner had a
paralytic stroke, which intercepted the nerves in his legs. No longer
did he ride about “Hillview” on a pony, but sat in a wheel-chair and
stormed and fussed when his attendants delayed to bring his meals.
He still had his deaf man’s voice, but could not hear a sound; you
wrote your ideas on a pad for him to read. You did not have to write
very much, because he was interested in his own ideas, and content if
you would sit and nod and smile. Every time he found anything in his
_Evening Transcript_ damaging to the reputation of a “Red,” he would
cut it out and mark it, and mail it to Cornelia with injurious comments.
To make up for the loss of Abner’s legs, Betty’s older sister,
Priscilla, brought four of them, eagerly kicking, into the world. The
first time it was a boy, and his name at once became Alvin Thornwell
Shaw, quite a load for two tiny red legs to kick under. Since his
father was a mighty mountain of copper, it pleased his Aunt Betty to
refer to him as the young copper hill; and when the second heir arrived
and proved to be a niece, Betty took to calling her the little branch
bank. Betty herself was not going to provide her mother and father with
any grandchildren--at least not for a while. Betty talked defiantly
about the wicked practice known as “birth control,” and said that this
was not a fit world into which to bring babies. What was the use of
raising boys for the military men to take away from you and kill? What
was the use of raising either boys or girls when their grandparents
would insist upon leaving them millions of dollars, thereby turning
them into parasites and deadheads?
Family propriety compelled the inviting of Cornelia to act as godparent
to both the copper hill and the branch bank; but each time she modestly
declined, not feeling equal to the responsibility of training either
Thornwells or Shaws. But she attended the baptisms, which were in
Trinity Church on a weekday afternoon, with many relatives and some
invited friends. The font had been made beautiful with flowers, and
there was a hymn sung by those present, and the precious infant slept
soundly, wearing the embroidered christening robe, two yards long,
which had been made for Great-great-great-grandfather Thornwell, the
sea-captain, and used at the baptisms of his infant descendants ever
since. When the splashing of cold water woke the victim up, it let out
a yell of indignation, which was a good sign, the old ladies said,
because it let the devil out; the old men chuckled, and commented--a
powerful voice, like Abner Thornwell’s and Josiah’s--it was the old
stock!
There were two godfathers and one godmother for the boy, and the second
time one godfather and two godmothers for the girl. Each time these
sponsors in baptism did promise and vow three things in the infant’s
name; of which the first was that it would “renounce the devil and all
his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all the covetous
desires of the same.” Cornelia Thornwell looked about her: here was the
elder Shaw, grandfather of this infant, who sat tight upon a huge store
of treasure, and some twelve years ago, when his wage-slaves in the
Mesaba Range had dared to revolt, had sent in thugs and gunmen to slug
and murder them, exactly as if it had been at home in Massachusetts.
And here was Rupert Alvin, who had taken away ten million dollars from
Jerry Walker, and now was trying to undermine the highest court of his
Commonwealth in order to keep it. The covetous desires of the world!
And then the “vain pomp and glory.” Here were stately male personages
in striped trousers and cutaway coats, or braided black broadcloth, the
very stick-pins in their ties having ritual significance; here were
ladies, who had made a life-study of the art of demonstrating their
millions and tens of millions without appearing to do so. Here was a
temple built with hands, having single windows which had cost thousands
of dollars, and nothing within sight of it that was not luxurious.
Outside were shining limousines, and liveried chauffeurs waiting. At
the Alvin mansion there was a collation, and heads of finance and
fashion would eat cake and drink punch, and gossip about everything
that was expensive and therefore important. At the Shaw mansion they
were preparing a dinner-dance for next week, that would be the most
costly affair of the season; they would furnish the newspapers with
every detail of a great family advertisement, and eagerly read every
word next morning. The vain pomp and glory of the world!
And all this in the name of Comrade Jesus! A strange, strange prank
of time! Cornelia came out from the famous brownstone temple, erected
to the glory of the proletarian martyr, and walked past the statue of
Phillips Brooks, which graced one side of it. A figure of the Son of
Man, stepping out of the side of the building and laying his hand upon
the shoulder of the great Bishop of the Blue-bloods. Bishop Brooks had
been quite a radical in his day, and the wits of the city were wont
to say that the hand of Jesus was an admonitory hand, and that Jesus
was saying, “Be careful, old man, remember what they did to me, and I
didn’t say half what you are saying!”
From this ceremony Cornelia went to visit Vanzetti, who had been
certified back to Charlestown, and was shoveling coal again. She was
moved to tell him where she had been, and what she had seen, and
her thoughts on the subject. “I have been wondering, Bart, if they
should make a martyr out of you, will people be committing crimes and
hypocrisies in your name a couple of thousand years from now?”
It was an idea the prisoner took seriously; the thought of martyrdom
having become the mainspring of his lonely life. “Nonna,” said he “if
they make me martyr, I fix it, I write message it cannot be mistake. If
anybody say Vanzett’, it mean joostice, it mean freedom--it cannot mean
nothing but!”
XVII
It was Boston, pious, proper, and proud. The _Telegram_ was publishing
onslaughts upon Sacco and Vanzetti, calling for their blood because
they were “atheists.” One day the staid bankers and brokers of State
Street, proceeding about their business in front of the Old State
House, scene of the Boston Massacre, were astonished by the spectacle
of the publisher of the _Telegram_ rolling in the gutter, pummeling and
being pummeled by the Honorable James Michael Curley, until recently
mayor of the city. Next day the two champions were issuing statements
in the newspapers, each claiming to have done the more successful
pummeling. The day after that the publisher was publishing a cartoon
of the ex-mayor, showing him in prison stripes--he having “done” a few
months many years back. And then the ex-mayor was sending the publisher
to jail for criminal libel: all this in Boston, pious, proper, and
proud, thirsting for the blood of “atheists”!